I'm gonna try to work through my like 20-series backlog (since Narutaru was SUCH a success), but while I pick what to watch next I'll write a quick post about stuff that's presently airing.
First is a series that I was worried about but watched an episode and am presently giving a chance to: Soul Eater Not. I recently did a post on Soul Eater itself, which is a fine show, but when I read the blurb on Soul Eater Not I at first thought they were in no way related, since Soul Eater was a shonen action series about beating up witches and demons and Not is a seinen slice of life series about going to school. But it turns out it's a slice of life series taking place in the Soul Eater world, at the Soul Eater school, about three girls who are kohai (underclassmen) to the main cast, and seems to be doing a lot of filling in backgrounds on minor characters that didn't get enough screen time in the main anime. I was somewhat daunted by the 'ecchi' tag, but in three episodes we've seen cleavage like three times and panties like once, so I guess that got left out, though the animation style is dramatically different and much more 'pretty' compared to the original's sharp lines. Don't think SEN is going to be genius, but I'll finish it unless it just completely jumps off a cliff.
Next is Nisekoi, which a couple of different sub groups I follow are doing, so I picked it up, despite everything I could tell saying it was yet another romcom. And it is, but it's executed really well, I got through the twelve episodes my favorite fansubbers had finished and am actually quite happy with how it's going, relationships had reached points of no return, characters have confessed their affection for each other and progress is being made. A couple days deciding I liked it, I found out that it's made by Studio Shaft, who also did Madoka, Bakemonogatari, Sasami-san and several other things I like, and in fact has made nothing I haven't at least enjoyed. It was nice to find myself liking something of theirs not knowing it was theirs, though.
Speaking of Shaft, I also stumbled across another show (the one that actually made me go 'Huh, this feels like Shaft style, I wonder if they made it...' when I also found they were doing Nisekoi) called Mekaku City Actors, which I liked the first episode of but I'm not really clear on anything else about. So I think I'll be watching that too, it's gotten a couple more episodes out of me, and it's Shaft so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
In downloading a bunch of first episodes to poke through I found a series called Black Bullet, which as titles go is pretty awful. The animation was good and the execution was competent and it has Horie Yui (<3) in it, though, so I'm willing to give it a couple more episodes. It's basically directly ripping off Attack on Titan, though, just set in a recognizable near future and with giant insects with some kind of virus rather than horrific man-eating humanoids, and instead of <SPOILERS>, we have little girls with superstrength and healing factor.
I also came across the first episode of the most recent installment of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, which definitely lived up to its reputation. I kind of want to watch it but I'd have to find the original animated versions to really feel justified in doing so. I really did like the humor of juxtaposition of the super-macho manga-style drawn main cast onto more standard backgrounds and characters, and I can easily see how the series manages to straddle absurdity and seriousness together.
I'm sitting on another first episodes I haven't watched yet, the one that I'm kind of curious about is "Nobunaga the Fool," which, while I can't be certain looks awfully similar to Oda Nobuna no Yabou, at least in the 'history + boobs' conceit, though I have to admit that Nobuna and Koihime Musou are different enough, so I really can't judge. We'll see if it's any good.
Anyway, I'll probably have another series in a couple of days; I have a lot of work I'm procrastinating on and should be doing instead of rambling here.
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